When Calpendo is first installed, have a play with it to help understand the way it works, and to become more familiar with the configuration options. There are some things that need to be set up as soon as you start playing with Calpendo, and some things that must be done before going live and using Calpendo for real. These are described here.

Resources

For each resource that is to be bookable (rooms, scanners, people or whatever), create a resource using the Resource Editor as described by Resources.There is no need to worry about resource groups or locations just yet. Just make sure that all the resources required for now are created.

Email Preferences

Tell Calpendo how it should send email, so that Automatic Emails, reminders and manual emails will work properly. Set the email preferences on the Email tab of the Global Preferences page.

 

If Calpendo is hosted on calpendo.com, then the SMTP host and emailed base URL will have been configured already. However, it is possible to choose the name that Calpendo reminders and Automatic Email appear to come from.

New User Requests

When a new user registers in Calpendo, by default Calpendo is configured to send an email to administrators. This means any user registered in the system whose roles include the Admin role. Who gets Email Workflow Actions can be changed, but for now it is best to make sure that there is at least one user with the Admin role that has a valid email address configured. See Modifying Users for information on how to do that.

Before Going Live

These are the things that need to be done before you go live, and use Calpendo for real:

 

•Work out what properties should exist on a Project and bookings for different resources.

•Work out how projects will be approved, and who will assign the project a unique code.

•Use the Bakery to configure the properties on a Project and then modify the project template, which is copied each time a new project is created.

•Use the Bakery to create any required Booking sub types and configure their properties.

•Create one or two projects in Calpendo, and configure them to mirror real projects to see if all the information required can be specified.

•Work out whether to assign all users a User Type, and whether to assign all projects a Project Type. It's much easier to assign the type to users and projects as they are created, so it's better to work out how this is to work before creating users and projects. See Configuring Types And Groups.

•Identify who will perform day-to-day administration of the system. This means working out who will approve bookings or projects (if appropriate) and who will users go to if they can't make a booking (because Calpendo has been configured to limit what they can do). Also, while Calpendo will make the management of the shared resources much easier, there are always some problems that require intervention to fix. For example, if some equipment breaks down.

•Customise the FAQ with questions pertinent to your installation especially who to contact in case of problems.

•Configure user roles using the bakery, if you want to add more roles to the system. These can be used by Booking Rules, Permissions, Workflows and Manual Emails

•Approve new users as they register or change the roles bestowed upon users that have already registered.

•Finish resource configuration by choosing Booking sub types, locations, types and groups and choosing whether bookings for each resource require a project.

•Set up any Workflows so that people receive notification about events and add additional functionality to the system.

•Set up Permissions to control who can do what, with what and when.

•Create Time Templates that earmark time for some users or projects.

•Create Booking Rules to control who can make what bookings. For example, to limit double bookings or the amount of time that can be booked by each user or project.

•Create custom searches and reports, such as project usage of resources,  billing etc.

•Customise menus with the Menu Editor and by assigning menus to users or setting the default menus for each user role.

•Create or modify the Frequently Asked Questions that are shown to the users.

•Configure the global preferences.

•Finally, define Dynamic Biskits using the Bakery in Calpendo to be able to create, read, update and delete any other table required, in the Calpendo database, subject to some limitations. This may be required if actual resource usage is captured (as opposed to bookings), and this needs to be stored in the Calpendo database and Calpendo used to examine and compare this with bookings. Alternatively, use Calpendo as a general-purpose data editing engine.